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Thursday, June 30, 2005

"A UN panel of legal experts has recommended (that) Indonesian security forces and local militia leaders responsible for crimes against humanity in East Timor in 1999 should face an international tribunal if Jakarta does not prosecute them effectively within six months.

"If it does not, the report recommends that the UN security council create an international criminal tribunal in a third state or refer the matter to the International Criminal Court."

October 15, 2003: Human Rights Watch said that the Indonesian government should remove from its military campaign in Aceh those officers responsible for gross human rights violations in Indonesia and East Timor.

Human Rights Watch specifically called for the removal from Aceh of:

Major General Adam Damiri - convicted of crimes against humanity in East Timor by Jakarta's ad hoc court on East Timor.

Brigadier General Suhartono Suratman - indicted by the U.N.-created Serious Crimes Unit in East Timor for crimes against humanity committed in East Timor in 1999.

Major General Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin - 'implicated in the crackdown against the May 1998 demonstrations in Jakarta; closely linked to gross human rights violations in East Timor in 1999'.

Major General Kiki Syahnakri - indicted by the U.N. Serious Crimes Unit in East Timor for crimes against humanity committed in East Timor in 1999.

Bhatia reminds us there was an Asian economic crisis in the late 1990s.

In the mid- to late 1990s, 'Asia's economic castles were found to be built on sand. Their miracles were almost entirely debt-financed.'

Bhatia has some worries about the Chinese economy:

1. China has unreliable accounting and governance standards.

2. There is a great gap between rich and poor. 800 million rural dwellers suffer from low wages. Agricultural prices are declining. The Chinese who flee the countryside for better wages and living standards in China's coastal cities find 'their pot of gold is no more than an illusion'.

3. 'Without totalitarian state controls, China would have suffered a million labor-led mutinies by now'.

4. Provincial governments 'may be sitting on a growing mountain of debt that could easily rival the bad loans held by the state's banking sector.'

"A potentially horrendous debt crunch that could see millions of Chinese lose their jobs. That will unravel China's stable domestic order."

Manjit Bhatia is an academic and writer in Australia. He specializes in international economics and politics, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

"Soon, mirroring Stalin's terror in the Soviet Union, an estimated army of about 100,000 spies and infiltrants operated throughout Germany, reporting to Nazi officials the activities of any critics or dissenters."

~~~

Herr Blair wants ID cards in Britain.

Ministers have won a Commons vote over their controversial ID cards plan but their majority was cut from 67 to 31.

Tories (Conservatives), Liberal Democrats and a number of rebel Labour MPs voted against the bill's second reading.

Tory (Conservative) David Davis said Labour's legacy would be "surveillance from cradle to grave".

David Davis, for the Conservatives, said "If, 10 years ago, I had gone on the radio and said that within a decade a Labour government would try to do away with jury trial, remove Habeas Corpus, eliminate the presumption of innocence, introduce punishment without trial, and put house arrest on the statute book, they would have locked me up."

The Conservative Party now looks electable for the first time for many years.

The Lib Dems said the plans would not help fight terrorism.

Liberal Democrat Mark Oaten said: "Britain has taken the first step towards a changed society where people need to have their fingerprints scanned to see their doctor, and the government will have wasted billions of pounds on a piece of plastic."

"For those in the 'ID cards are perfectly acceptable, I've got nothing to hide' camp, I invite you to install a webcam into your house for the Home Office to watch your every move. Whilst you're at it, read 1984 and compare it to the inevitable direction our government's leading us. The next step is the micro chipped population. It's important to recognise this and say no to ID cards now. Why should you be taxed on your existence?" - Martin, Hampshire, UK

"ID cards are authoritarian and wrong. Furthermore, the Madrid bombings show that they do not even help against terrorism. When we take into consideration the digital rights management technology coming into PCs, RF chips in our shopping instead of barcodes, the tracking of cars for road pricing and ID card (not to mention CCTV), every aspect of our lives will be under constant scrutiny. Do those who say that the "innocent have nothing to hide" really understand the Orwellian and horrifying implications of this kind of future?" - Gregg, Manchester, UK

"Just one question: What documentation will be required to prove our identity when we apply for one of these super-hi-tech ID cards? Or are the authorities just going to take our word for it? So in effect, these new ID cards will be just as easy to forge as the birth certificate or driving licence used to prove who we are when applying for them in the first place?" - Anne, Haslemere, Surrey

"This is a good time to invest in the IT company that will get the contract for these cards as the project is sure to go massively over budget and be scrapped with great loss to the taxpayer - but great profits to the IT folk involved. If you think I'm being too cynical, then please name ONE high profile governmental IT project which was successfully completed on schedule and within budget." - Max, UK

"I'm 83-years-old, served five years in the forces during World War 2, did 38 years as a statutory officer and am now being told I may have to carry an ID Card. Has my freedon completely gone now? Why did I spend my working life for the good of England? ID cards won't work! The counterfeit ones will be on the market much cheaper before Blair/Brown and their crowd issue them for whatever they will cost." - Victor

"I don't want my daily life logged on a Government system. I thought that type of thing was for totalitarian or former communist states. The privacy and liberty of law abiding people should not be infringed simply to inconvenience criminals. The cards won't even do that given that it's currently touted as a voluntary system. Spend the money on more police officers." - Steve Chertsey

"Will we go the whole way and make Jewish people have their cards stamped with a big letter J? Will we need our ID cards before we're allowed to buy food? Or perhaps inspectors on trains will be shadowed by soldiers demanding to see everyone'e papers. Which particular Reichminister will be responsible for it? I thought my Grandad fought across Europe to stop this sort of totalitarian nonsense." Paul - Rudgwick

~~~

The Daily Express says the scheme would not deter terrorists and warns it could become the government's poll tax.

"The proposed introduction of identity cards will be a highly expensive mistake.... It is anathema to us in the trade union movement that a Labour government should try to reintroduce them. It is a sorry state of affairs when even the Tory party and the Liberal Democrats are opposed to this big brother idea...

"It is clear, however, that this scheme is based on unproven and flawed technology. The number of costly government IT failures is too long to list. The money that will be squandered on this scheme would be far better spent on investment in health and education, or solving the pensions crisis...

"The last time ID cards were seriously debated in parliament, Labour MPs opposed them. Alastair Darling said: "The idea that every individual would have his or her life story on a little metal strip on a little plastic card is objectionable ... a card could include an individual's medical history, work progress, financial status, what he did, where he did it, and where he was stopped. All that information could be revealed by passing a card through a computer terminal. That is a great step and I should be reluctant to take it."

"We see no difference between then and now. ID cards will cost billions and resolve nothing. We call upon parliamentarians to raise their voices against the deeply flawed ID cards bill. This Labour government needs to be saved from itself."

Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University.

Ferguson wrote:

"There is every reason to believe that the relatively good times Americans have enjoyed in the past decade may be about to come to a painful end.

"What Mr Brown omits to mention when citing the wisdom of Chairman Greenspan is that, since the collapse of the dotcom bubble, the US economy has been running not just on empty but on billions of dollars of credit from Asia.

"This is hardly a strategy Europe should rush to imitate.

"Americans on the East Coast - the sort Mr Brown hangs out with - like to look across the Atlantic and gloat at Europe's problems.

"But the Americans I know on the West Coast look the other way and see China, growing at breakneck speed, bankrolling the US government while at the same time wiping out American manufactures and building up a formidable military capability that will one day challenge American primacy in the Pacific region.

"None of which is to deny the seriousness of the problems facing Europe.

"My advice to Mr Brown is nevertheless to drop that "God Bless America" riff from his speeches."

Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. His latest book, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, is now a Penguin paperback.

"A company owned by the Chinese government has put in a bid (or here) to buy American oil company Unocal...

"When I think of Unocal, I can't help but think of the Afghanistan gas pipeline, a pipeline which Unocal would be developing if the United States could just get control of the country.

"The Taliban won't deal with an American-owned company, but the Taliban and the Chinese are old friends (something the Chinese don't like to talk about a lot these days), and presumably the Taliban would be delighted to approve the pipeline if Unocal were Chinese-owned...

"Wall Street could start a new line of work, the de-Americanization of companies whose American ownership makes their products unsaleable in much of the rest of the world (and just wait to see how much worse this is after the American attack on Syria or Iran).

"The neocons, through destroying the value of the American brand, have started a new line of financial business where squandered shareholder value can be recovered just by selling American companies to commercial entities that are clearly not American. Removing the American taint can make money for everyone. All hail the financial genius of the neocons!"

In his speech to the European parliament on June 23 2005, Tony Blair denounced as a caricature “the idea that Britain is in the grip of some extreme Anglo-Saxon market philosophy that tramples on the poor and disadvantaged.”

Hyland presents the evidence that Blair is wrong.

1. In 2005, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation produced a study showing that by 2001-2002, low wages were the leading cause of poverty in the UK, with more than a third of households counted among the “working poor.”

Under Thatcher and Blair, Britain has been transformed into 'a cheap-labour location for the giant multinationals'.

2. The various social policy schemes 'glorified' by Blair 'are essentially a subsidy to employers to enable them to continue paying low wages'.

3. Low wages have helped ensure that British workers work the longest hours in western Europe.

4. Child poverty levels are amongst the highest of the industrialised countries, with more than one in four children officially deemed poor.

5. Low incomes for much of the working class have only been masked by a massive increase in borrowing. The total of personal debt in the UK is now above £1,000 billion. Individual bankruptcies have reached a record high—a 30 percent increase on the previous 12 months.

6. The introduction of university tuition fees and the replacement of student grants with loans mean that young people account for an increasing number of these bankruptcies.

7. Almost 26,000 house repossession orders were granted in the first three months of this year because people could not pay their mortgages, the highest number since 1995.

8. Blair claims that his government has increased levels of investment in public services.

'Much of this takes the form of public-private partnerships, in which the government pays for commercial investors to penetrate lucrative markets in health and education provision that were previously closed to them. The end result is that the state sector is increasingly cash-starved and saddled with ever-rising payments to private investors, undermining the quality of schools and hospital care.'

9. Under Blair, the wealthiest 1,000 people in the UK have seen a 152 percent increase in their fortunes, with the richest 1 percent of the population taking a greater share of national income than at any time since the 1930s.

Acording to Prison Planet, "former MI5 agent David Shayler, who previously blew the whistle on the British government paying Al Qaeda $200,000 to carry out political assassinations, has gone on the record with his conviction that 9/11 was an inside job meant to bring about a permanent state of emergency in America and pave the way for the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and ultimately Iran and Syria....

"Shayler said that his suspicions were first aroused about 9/11 when the usual route of crime scene investigation was impeded when the debris was immediately seized and shipped off to China.

Shayler:

'There are so many questions that need to be answered, protocols being overridden within national defense, people actively being stopped from carrying out investigations....

"Shayler elaborated by saying the evidence suggests the attack was originally meant to be much wider in scope and was an attempt at a violent coup intended to decapitate the entire government as a pretext for martial law.

"Shayler was forthright in his assertion that the attack was planned and executed within the jurisdiction of the military-industrial complex...

"Shayler ended by questioning the highly suspicious nature of the collapse of the twin towers and Building 7, the first buildings in history, all in the same day, to collapse from so-called fire damage alone."

Shayler says that the WTC buildings look as if they were demolished by controlled demolitions.

"The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), a grouping of NGOs, intellectuals and writers opposed to the war in Iraq, on Friday accused the United States of causing more deaths in Iraq than ousted president Saddam Hussein.

"'With two wars and 13 years of criminal sanctions, the United States have been responsible for more deaths in Iraq than Saddam Hussein,' Larry Everest, a journalist, told hundreds of anti-war activists gathered in Istanbul."

~~

How odd that some of the British and American electorates voted for war criminals in recent elections.

Ahmadinejad won. "His diatribes against corruption and his pledge that oil wealth would be used to improve the lives of ordinary people had an impact. Yet this is precisely the field in which he cannot deliver.

"The Islamic republic is both a corrupt regime and one where connections count for everything. All but an honourable handful of the clerico-political class have enriched themselves, some illegally and some by simply taking advantage of their positions.

"Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's main opponent in the election, is one of the most prominent examples, and he suffered for it in the campaign. But among the men who helped get Ahmadinejad in are many who have profited as much or almost as much. Is Mr Clean going to go after them?"

According to Hughes, the number of women and girls in prostitution in Tehran is estimated to be: 84,000

Some are are on the streets, others are in the 250 brothels that reportedly are found in the city.

According to Hughes: thousands of Iranian women and girls have been sold into sexual slavery abroad.

Hughes reports that Government officials are involved in buying, selling, and sexually abusing women and girls.

There are reports of some girls as young as 8 and 10 being to sent to Arab countries.

"In one case, a 16-year-old girl was smuggled to Turkey, and then sold to a 58-year-old European national for $20,000."

In Tehran there are an estimated 25,000 street children, most of them girls. Pimps prey upon street children.

According to Hughes: "Women report that in order to have a judge approve a divorce they have to have sex with him. Women who are arrested for prostitution say they must have sex with the arresting officer. There are reports of police locating young women for sex for the wealthy and powerful mullahs."

In Karaj, the former head of a Revolutionary Tribunal and seven other senior officials were reportedly arrested in connection with a prostitution ring that used 12 to 18 year old girls from a shelter called the Center of Islamic Orientation.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Liam McDougall, in the 26 June 2005 Sunday Herald, refers to a study by the Toronto-based G8 Research Group.

The study says: “Debt cancellation only amounts to one-sixth of Africa’s $300 billion external debt. The current deal only covers 18 African states, many of which are comparatively small and none of which can be described as economic engines on the continent.”

The G8 are accused of fuelling wars in the continent.

The UK, US, Russia and France are accused of supplying small arms and light aircraft to such areas as the Sudan.

On 13th May 2005 military forces in Uzbekistan fired on protestors in the town of Andijan, where hundreds of people may have been killed. Accordingto the UK's Times newspaper, British military vehicles were used

Trevor Royle, in the 26 June 2005 Sunday herald, wrote about how the world's richest countries arm the poorest.

Over the past four years, Britain has sold more than £1 billion worth of arms to Africa.

In 2003, the G8 countries exported arms worth £6.6bn to the developing world.

France: Conventional arms sales worth $3.2bn. This includes sales to Burma and Sudan

Germany: Sales worth $1.8bn.

Italy: Sales worth $2.7bn to customers including Algeria, Colombia, Eritrea, Indonesia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sierra Leone. The police in Brazil report that the most frequently confiscated sidearm is the Italian-made Beretta, which accounts for 8% of the world’s gun fatalities.

Russia: Sales worth $2.62bn. Customers include Sudan.

UK: Sales worth $4.3bn. 42 BAe Hawk strike aircraft were sold to India in 2002 at the time that Tony Blair 'was trying to avert a war between India and Pakistan'.

US: The world’s leading arms supplier with sales of $151.9bn. Recent customers have included Colombia, Israel, Nigeria, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka. Four US companies are the world’s leading arms manufacturers: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon.

Greg Szymanski, at Prison Planet 24 June 24 2005, wrote that Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, has expressed doubt about the official 9/11 story.

Morgan Reynolds, a former chief economist in the Bush I administration, recently criticized the government account of 9/11, calling the government story "bogus" and saying the WTC most likely fell from a controlled demolition.

Roberts said: "They (neo cons) are making such fatal mistakes and are about as insane as Hitler and the Nazi Party when they invaded Russia in the dead of the winter...

"The real story is not Morgan Reynolds or myself, but why have so many former Republican conservatives and top ranking officials who disagree with the neo cons been systematically run out of Washington? And, also, why is the media so intent on covering up the Bush-neo con agenda and all the mistakes surrounding it?

"I guess the real story about 9/11 is about what the people are actually saying. I’ve gotten hundreds of emails in response to my columns and many of them talk about not getting the truth from the government or the media about what really happened at the World Trade Center. I know many qualified engineers and scientists have said the WTC collapsed from explosives. In fact, if you look at the manner in which it fell, you have to give their conclusions credibility."

The former chief economist in the Labor Department during President Bush’s first term told the world he thought the WTC fell from a controlled demolition, indicating 9/11 was "an inside government job."

Reynolds concluded:

"It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause(s) of the collapse of the twin towers and Building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either.

"The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings.

"More importantly, momentous political and social consequences would follow if impartial observers concluded that professionals imploded the WTC. Meanwhile, the job of scientists, engineers and impartial researchers everywhere is to get the scientific and engineering analysis of 9/11 right."

Szymanski commented: 'Not only did millions read his story on the Internet, but Reynolds controversial comments then drew instant attention from numerous mainstream newspapers, radio and television stations, including UPI, MSNBC, FOX News and over a dozen other major market local radio and TV stations.'

Reynolds said:

"I had a huge response and it really was amazing. I never expected so many people to respond so passionately. I literally received hundreds and hundred of emails, some agreeing with me and others, of course, disagreeing.

"After it was all said and done, as things are starting to finally quiet down now, I would guess it was about 5 to 1 in favor of what I was saying. However, I never imagined how much support there was out there for what I was suggesting occurred on 9/11...

"What it boils down to is that the government and the mainstream media are not digging into the 9/11 controversy because they are hiding something. From a media point of view, it’s the story of the century and they are not even trying to connect the dots.

"It’s nothing new. The government has always lied about so many things. Look at the Downing Street Memo, for example, the document confirming that the Bush administration lied to us about its motives for getting into the war.

" If they lied to us about this, what else? Well, 9/11 is just another example."

William Rodriguez was the WTC janitor 'who heard and felt a strong explosion in the basement levels of the north tower just seconds before the jetliner crashed into the top floors.'

Rodriguez claims a massive underground explosion brought down the towers.

His story is strengthened further 'by 14 other eye witnesses who can verify his claims, as well as a burn victim from the basement explosion.'

Immediately after 9/11, Rodriguez tried to tell his story. Rodriguez claims the 9/11 Commission and the mainstream media have systematically censored his words in order to protect the official government story, a story ignoring the possibility of explosives being used to bring down the WTC.

Commenting on Rodriguez, Reynolds said:

"It’s not a coincidence that there was first an explosion below and then the jetliner explosion seconds later above. At least there should have been a thorough investigation since the timing of the explosions strikes me as an impossibility if you believe, as the government contends, that only a jetliner brought down the towers."

Saturday, June 25, 2005

Chris Floyd, in the Moscow Times 24 June 2005, wrote about 'Child Abuse'.

Floyd does not write about child abuse in Chechnya but about child abuse in Iraq.

Floyd suggests that those who wanted the Iraq invasion:

1. told lies2. were intent on looting Iraq and making money for their cronies3. were prepared to kill huge numbers of innocent children

Floyd:

"Let's not imagine George W. Bush nudging Tony Blair in the ribs as they masticated their pork together, saying, "Cholera, eh? Typhoid fever. Malnutrition! By God, we can grind these Iraqi children lower than the slum rats of Haiti!"

"Of course it wasn't like that.... It was all about numbers, processes, abstractions...

"So when leading international agencies... find that Iraq's children are dwindling and dying twice as fast under the coalition's benevolent care than under the despotism of Saddam Hussein, we should not conclude that this was the liars' conscious intention.

"Yes, it's true that Iraq's child malnutrition rate is now worse than the broken nations of Uganda or Haiti, as the Japan Times reports.

"Yes, cholera and typhoid are cutting swaths through the population, with especial virulence in the 'stable' areas of the Shiite south.

"Yes, epidemics of hepatitis are killing pregnant women.

"Yes, antibiotics are scarce, leaving children, the old and the weak to die of common infections - that is, when they can get treated at all in a health system ravaged by the liars' war and its atrocious aftermath. (Such as the destruction of Fallujah, for example, when coalition forces deliberately destroyed the city's health clinics and imprisoned doctors to prevent news of civilian casualties from leaking to the press, as the Pentagon's own "information specialists" told The New York Times.)

"And yes, it's true that Iraq - once a modern and prosperous nation - has suffered 'one of the most dramatic declines in human welfare in recent history' during the occupation, as the UN says.

"But again, this was not part of the liars' deliberate design...

"If they could have transferred more than $300 billion from the public treasury to the pockets of their family members and business partners without having to concoct a brutal and baseless war of aggression, they would have done so."

"The New England Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church on June 11 passed a resolution calling for voluntary selective divestment from companies that profit in a significant way from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. This measure is similar to initiatives being considered by several other Christian denominations. The Presbyterian Church USA adopted a selective divestment measure last year. A number of Jewish groups in the United States, Israel, Europe, and South Africa have also called for selective divestment as a tool to end the Israeli occupation...

"Israel continues to take the land of the Palestinian people for ever-expanding settlements, Israeli-only roadways, and the construction of a giant wall and fence that is confiscating a significant portion of the Palestinian land in the West Bank. 83% of the West Bank’s water has been taken for Israeli use, leaving Palestinians with desperate water shortages. Israel has destroyed the homes of more than 28,000 Palestinians in four and a half years. Hundreds of thousands of ancient olive trees and vast tracts of agricultural land have also been destroyed.

"Israel has built a ring of Jewish settlements around Arab East Jerusalem, impeding access to the West Bank for Jerusalem’s Arab residents and ensuring that Palestinians cannot use East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, which has been called for by every major peace plan.

"In 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled by 14-1 that Israel should halt and dismantle the Wall being constructed illegally in occupied Palestinian territory, and make reparation for the damage arising from its unlawful conduct. Palestinians continue to alternate between often-futile non-violent protest and unacceptable violent attacks on Israelis. Israeli soldiers have repeatedly fired on non-violent protesters, killing and wounding not only Palestinians, but international peace activists – including Americans – who have stood with them. In addition, volunteers with the Christian Peacemaker Teams in the West Bank have been attacked by Israeli settlers while escorting Palestinian children to school. Settlers have been involved in many acts of violence against Palestinians.

"Palestinian Christians are being forced to leave the Holy Land. Their land and water has also been taken by Israel. They now comprise less than 2% of the West Bank’s population, and there are very real fears that soon there will be no Christian presence in the land of Christ’s birth. Those who remain are calling on Christians everywhere to reject the policies that are driving them and their Muslim neighbors from a region their ancestors have inhabited for more than 2000 years. Many recall a time when Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived in harmony together in this land, and believe it can happen again when people of all religions are accepted as equals, with full rights to life, liberty and property.

"Our Christian faith calls us to reject violence of any kind, and to reject acts of aggression that provoke violence. As United Methodists, we are committed to work for justice, and to refuse to be complacent in the face of such monumental human suffering. We are also called to support other members of the Body of Christ around the world.

"It is not expected that United Methodist divestment activity or that of any other religious denomination will significantly affect Israel’s economy or the bottom line of major US companies, but this is not the goal. The goal is to make all United Methodists and other Americans aware of their relationship to companies that benefit from the Israeli occupation and give them an opportunity to withdraw from such relationships, so they are not participants in human rights violations that violate Christian principles and international law. Another, equally important goal is to give hope to Palestinians, including our Christian counterparts in the region, and let them know they are not forgotten.

"Christ has called us to be a light to the nations, to replace darkness and despair with hope rooted in love for all God’s creation. Refusing to be a part of an illegal occupation that endangers Israelis as well as Palestinians is an effective way to show our light to the world."

I believe we will see an Ahmadinejad presidency, mainly for two reasons: Firstly, most people in Iran are fed up with the so called 'mafia' - corrupt officials who have influence over almost all businesses, Rafsanjani and his family are seen as the people who belong to this group and Ahmadinejad's campaign has been based around removing these so called old managers and replacing them with the young. Secondly, the majority of Iranians know that the president in Iran does not have real power as defined by the constitution and ultimate real power rest with the Supreme Leader.Nozar

How can there be democracy when all candidates are filtered and selected solely by the supreme leader of the so called 'Islamic' republic who is supposedly appointed to his office by God and has the power to overturn every decision by the congress and the president?Shawn

The rich class are just afraid that Ahmadinejad will come in and try to root out corruption, discrimination, and poverty all at their expense. They want to consolidate their wealth and power represented by Hashemi. If the elections were rigged, they would be rigged for Hashemi, not Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad has the support of the poor/working class. Rob

In our area of Tehran, AbbasAbad, almost everyone (80%) in our area voted for Mr Ahmadinejad, and from reports from other streets it was almost the same. In the south of Tehran where other members of my family live he has a lot of support. These people have got fed up with corrupted politicians and so-called reformists and now want someone who will be for the people. What you must remember is that these people who are voting for Mr Ahmadinejad, their parents are those who supported a revolution in 1979 and gave their children to defend our country against Saddam. Mr Ahmadinejad does not need the polls to be rigged, the people are behind him.Ghasem

Friday, June 24, 2005

"Less than a week before the 9.11 attack, Atta and several other hijackers were aboard one of Abramoff’s casino boats ...

"Atta may have felt right at home in the world of fast cash and unlicensed gambling boat ‘cruises to nowhere’ of Republican lobbyist (and observant Jew) Jack Abramoff. He would almost certainly have been comfortable with the “gangland-style hit straight out of ‘Goodfellas” that cemented Abramoff’s prominent position in that industry.

"At the time of the Sept 11 attack one of Abramoff’s chief claims to fame was as the proud owner of the SunCruz line: a dozen unlicensed gambling boats plying the waters off the Florida coast in a fashion which in any other state would have been considered criminal."

"Abramoff is under investigation by the Senate and a federal grand jury over allegations he and a colleague overcharged Indian tribes for their lobbying. Abramoff, whose ties to President Bush and DeLay are also under scrutiny, denies wrongdoing."

"Where to begin examining the extraordinary career of Jack Abramoff? His work trying to secure a visa for the great Zairian kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko, perhaps,or the bilking of an estimated $66 million out of Native American tribes, clients he described as "monkeys," "troglodytes," and "idiots"? Or his leadership of a 1980s think tank financed, unbeknownst to him apparently, by the intelligence arm of South Africa's apartheid regime?"

"There remains a strong suspicion that Atta’s terrorist cadre—supposedly unknown and friendless and burrowing into the woodwork—was able to call on the assistance, when necessary, of a friendly global network.

"Could it be that this network is the same one being probed so gingerly today by investigators looking into Jack Abramoff?"

"Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered."

Thursday, June 23, 2005

"Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting today that the United States Military Forces operating in the Iraqi War Theater have come under sophisticated bombing attacks utilizing Laser Technology known only to exist in Israel’s vast arsenal of weapons..."

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

The excellent William Blum has an article in Counterpunch, 20 June 2005, that should be read in full.

Some quotes:

"Progressives of my generation became anti-anti-communists because the powers-that-be in the United States, for decades and decades, used the sins - real and (often) fabricated - of the Soviet Union as a justification for US foreign policy.

"Thus, the horrors carried out by the US in Korea were justified because 'we're fighting communism'.

"Thus, the horrors carried out by the US in Vietnam were justified because 'we're fighting communism'.

"Another myth ... : The Yalta agreement of 1945, in planning for 'the establishment of order in Europe', affirmed 'the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.' We've been told ever since that it was the evil commies that caused this noble agreement to fall apart.

"But, in fact, it was the United States and the United Kingdom who cynically violated this affirmation before Stalin did. In Greece. Before the war in Europe even ended! By grossly interfering in the civil war, taking the side of those who had supported the Nazis in the war (sic), thus enabling them to defeat those who had fought against the Nazis. The latter, you see, had amongst its number some who could be called (choke, gasp) 'communists'."

...

"August 6 and 9 will mark the 60th anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. We can expect the usual speeches and editorials telling us how the use of the bombs obviated the need for a land invasion of Japan, thus saving a huge number of US servicemen's lives.

"'Omission,' wrote George Orwell, 'is the most powerful form of lie.'

"The principal omissions from the a-bomb story is that Japan's military capability had been hopelessly destroyed and the Japanese government had been frantically sending peace feelers to the United States for a long time before those fateful days of August; peace feelers which Washington completely ignored because they wanted to use the atomic bombs."

...

"Indonesian officials saying they're going to reform the military is like officials in Nevada saying they're going to crack down on gambling. For 40 years the Indonesian military has engaged in mass murder and other atrocities, in Jakarta, East Timor, Aceh, Papua, and elsewhere, taking the lives of well over a million people, including several Americans in recent years.

"For 40 years relations between the US and Indonesian militaries have been one of the very closest of such contacts in the third world for the United States, despite the occasional objections and prohibitions from Congress. For 40 years, American officials have been saying that they have to continue training and arming Indonesia's military because the contact with the American military will have some kind of ennobling effect. For 40 years it has had no such effect at all.

"As Senator Tom Harkin (D.-Iowa) observed in 1999: 'I have seen no evidence in my 24 years in Congress of one instance where because of American military involvement with another military that the Americans have stopped that foreign army from carrying out atrocities against their own people. No evidence, none.'

"Yet the pretense continues, for what else can an American official say? Something like this? - 'We don't care how brutal the Indonesian military is because they got rid of Sukarno and his irritating nationalism for us, and for 40 years they've been killing people we call communists, killing people we call terrorists, and protecting our oil, natural gas, mining, and other corporate interests against Indonesian protestors. Now if that's not freedom and democracy, I don't know what is.'"

~~~~

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II,

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

"At what point does Bono stop pretending that George Bush is "passionate and sincere" about world poverty, and does Geldof stop claiming that he "has actually done more than any American president for Africa"?

"At what point does Bono revise his estimate of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as "the John and Paul of the global-development stage" or as leaders in the tradition of Keir Hardie and Clement Attlee? How much damage do Bush and Blair have to do before the rock stars will acknowledge it?

"Geldof and Bono's campaign for philanthropy portrays the enemies of the poor as their saviours. The good these two remarkable men have done is in danger of being outweighed by the harm."

For every dollar to be dished out to Africa at the G8 meeting next month, another is snatched away by Western protectionism, reported Raymond Whitaker in the Independent, 21 June 2005.

Examples of what is happening:

"Frozen chicken drumsticks: African countries have seen a dramatic rise in imports of cheap frozen chicken parts from the EU. Since European poultry farmers are able to feed their birds on subsidised grain, they can undercut local producers by half. Thriving poultry sectors in countries such as Ghana and Senegal have been hit by the forced opening of their markets."

"Maize: In many parts of Africa maize is the staple diet, often ground into meal to make porridge. Subsistence farmers as well as larger operators used to sell their excess production to local poultry producers, but that market has collapsed. Not only have imports of EU-subsidised cereal meal and pellets shot up, but chicken farmers (see above) have been wiped out by competition from Europe."

The Guardian reported, 21 June 2005, that Halliburton's British arm, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), is being supported in an oilfield deal in Kazakhstan with a $10m (£5.5m) loan guarantee from the Department of Trade and Industry.

"This is despite the fact that KBR recently received British government loan guarantees for a large gas plant deal in Nigeria now alleged to have been corrupt. In that case, evidence came to light that $180m in back-door payments was going to Nigerian officials."

Patricia Hewitt was trade and industry secretary when the key decisions were taken.

"Questions have ... been raised about the Blair Government's links with Enron itself. The company, it is alleged, successfully lobbied to get the Government to abandon its policy of placing a moratorium on gas-fired power stations; and to obtain clearance to buy the Wessex Water company, a year after Labour came to power."

"WILD CHILD - Raunchy daughter of a legendary rock star had public sex with a top media lawyer."

~~

Imagine some poor widow, earning £5,000 a year, who gives £100 to a charity. How much of that £100 is going to pay for the salaries of 'the greedy fat cats' who run the charities from 'palatial' offices?

Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi had been accused of bribing judges in the 1980s to favour his business interests.

World Corruption index (2004 scores) Finland 9.7 Italy 4.8 Haiti 1,5

~~

Scottish Justice

It has been suggested that the CIA set up a drugs route from Europe to the United States called Operation Corea. This allowed Syrian drug dealers, led by Monzer al-Kassar (who was involved with Oliver North in Iran-Contra) to ship heroin to the U.S.

"A United Nations observer at the Lockerbie trial has branded the verdicts in the case unfair, irrational and politically motivated, saying they should be overturned on appeal.

"In a scathing denunciation of the proceedings and the quality of Scottish justice, Professor Hans Koechler, a world-renowned expert in international law, claims there was no basis in evidence for the guilty verdict against one of the accused.

"Koechler, personally appointed by UN secretary general Kofi Annan to oversee the trial at Camp Zeist in Holland, said it was tainted by the air of international power politics and was neither fair nor balanced.

"The guilty verdict in regard to the first accused appears to be arbitrary, even irrational, his report states.

"The outcome of the trial may well have been determined by political considerations and may have been the result of a more or less openly -exercised influence... from outside the judicial framework.

"Koechler acknowledges that his condemnation of the trial may have a profound impact on the professional reputation and integrity of the three Scottish judges—Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and Maclean—but insists that the verdicts were unfair and adds that he hopes any appeal will correct the deficiencies of the trial. His report has been buried by both the UN and the Scottish authorities for the past two months.

On 17 June 2005 the Editor of Laksamana.Net wrote about corruption cases dealt with by the South Jakarta District Court.

According to Laksamana, the court "has maintained its reputation as 'the graveyard of corruption cases' by finding Golkar Party legislator Nurdin Halid not guilty of embezzling Rp169.7 billion ($18 million) in state funds from the National Logistics Agency (Bulog)....

"(The) South Jakarta District Court has a reputation for handing down the best verdicts that money can buy...

"The case stemmed from Bank Indonesia’s decision in early 1998 to give Rp169.7 billion to Bulog, which in turn channeled the money to KDI to purchase and distribute cooking oil to the needy...

"Halid is from South Sulawesi, which is also the home province of Vice President Jusuf Kalla.

"South Jakarta District Court in September 2000 suspended a $571 million corruption case against former president Suharto after his doctors and lawyers argued he was permanently unfit to face trial.

"South Jakarta District Court in 1999 found Suharto’s youngest son Hutomo ‘Tommy’ Mandala Putra and tycoon Ricardo Gelael not guilty of corruption involving a 1995 land scam with Bulog that cost the state Rp95.4 billion.

"The Supreme Court in 2000 overturned the verdict and sentenced each of them to 18 months behind bars... Tommy sought a presidential pardon, failed to get it, went into hiding and murdered the judge who convicted him.

"South Jakarta District Court in 2000 freed former Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency deputy chief Pande Lubis, tycoon Joko Tjandra and other businessmen of all charges in the Bank Bali corruption swindle that caused state losses of about $78 million.

"South Jakarta District Court in 2001 acquitted Zainal Abidin, a former Supreme Court official, who was accused of receiving Rp100 million in bribes.

"South Jakarta District Court in 2002 acquitted Sudjiono Timan, the former president director of state-owned investment firm PT Bahana Pembinaan Usaha Indonesia, of involvement in a swindle that cost the state $240.9 million.

"The Supreme Court in December 2004 sentenced him to 15 years in jail and ordered him to repay much the money, but some crooked police thoughtfully helped him to flee the country. He now apparently resides comfortably in Singapore.

"South Jakarta District Court in 1999 acquitted oil tycoon/politician Arifin Panigoro of charges related to state losses of $150 million linked to his Medco Group’s default on a foreign loan that had been guaranteed by state-owned company PT Asuransi Jasa Indonesia (Jasindo)...

David Edwards wrote, 7 June 2005, about the BBC reporter Nick Bryant and co.

"Bryant and co are ...now trying to convince us that Blair is "passionate" about saving Africa and the climate."Are they nuts?

"Joel Bakan explains in his book, The Corporation... “Nothing in its legal makeup limits what it can do to others in pursuit of its selfish ends, and it is compelled to cause harm when the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs.”

"We might ask why so many Ph.D.-level mathematicians and computer programmers and other numbers-savvy scientists are saying that the numbers don’t make sense (see, for instance, http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/, the Web site of Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips, lead statistician in the Moss v. Bush lawsuit challenging the Ohio election results). Indeed, the movement to investigate the 2004 election is led by such people, because the numbers are screaming at them that something is wrong.

"And we might, no, we must, ask — with more seriousness than the media have asked — about those exit polls, which in years past were extraordinarily accurate but last November went haywire, predicting Kerry by roughly the margin by which he ultimately lost to Bush. This swing is out of the realm of random chance, forcing chagrined pollsters to hypothesize a “shy Republican” factor as the explanation; and the media have bought this evidence-free absurdity because it spares them the need to think about the F-word: fraud."

Sunday, June 19, 2005

The Sunday Times, 19 June 2005, reported that "a sharp increase in British and American bombing raids on Iraq in the run-up to war 'to put pressure on the regime' was illegal under international law, according to leaked Foreign Office legal advice.

"The advice was first provided to senior ministers in March 2002. Two months later RAF and USAF jets began 'spikes of activity' designed to goad Saddam Hussein into retaliating and giving the allies a pretext for war."

"Not only do houses in many countries look more overvalued than at previous peaks, but with inflation so low, prices would have to stay flat for at least a decade to bring real prices back to long-run average values.

"Most important of all, in many countries this house-price boom has been driven far more by investors than in the past, and if prices start to dip, they are more likely to sell than owner-occupiers. In America this could mean the first fall in average house prices since the Great Depression."

"To doubters — who are predicting prices will fall by 20% or more in many countries — it is the gigantic bubble that swallowed the world, bigger than the stock market boom of the 1990s and almost twice the size of the Wall Street bubble of the roaring 1920s."

"In the late 1980s the UK property market peaked and the following recession left 2m people trapped in homes with negative equity — some for more than a decade. Some 75,000 homes were repossessed in 1991 alone.

"A recent study by the Bank for International Settlements examined 16 house price booms in various countries since 1970, and found that only six had ended in sudden busts. All but one of those, however, led to a recession.

"In Britain the long-run ratio of average of house prices to average annual earnings is 3.8; but it currently stands at 5.5."

~~

FRANCE :Average prices have risen 48% over the past three years, but rural houses in less fashionable regions can still be picked up for less than £50,000.

"A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world."

"An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately,' according to a report commissioned by the Pentagon.

"The report... identifies a plausible scenario in which global warming disrupts ocean currents that help moderate climate in North America and Europe, causing a five degree Fahrenheit drop in parts of North America by 2020 and a six degree drop in Northern Europe. It says global warming 'should be... a U.S. national security concern.'"

"CLIMATE change researchers have detected the first signs of a slowdown in the Gulf Stream — the mighty ocean current that keeps Britain and Europe from freezing.

"They have found that one of the “engines” driving the Gulf Stream — the sinking of supercooled water in the Greenland Sea — has weakened to less than a quarter of its former strength.

"The weakening, apparently caused by global warming, could herald big changes in the current over the next few years or decades. Paradoxically, it could lead to Britain and northwestern and Europe undergoing a sharp drop in temperatures.

"Such a change has long been predicted by scientists but the new research is among the first to show clear experimental evidence of the phenomenon."

~~~

The Sunday Herald, 19 June 2005, has a series of articles on climate change:

"The Antarctic ice sheet... Only a fraction of it has to melt to trigger a cataclysm... Over the past 50 years, 87% of its glaciers have retreated, and they are now retreating by an average of 50 metres a year...

"If the ice sheet melts, the level of the world’s seas could rise by about five metres, submerging half of Bangladesh and three-quarters of the Netherlands and drowning Calcutta, large parts of Sydney, London and Florida."

A scientific study last week revealed that "Bangladesh’s biggest island, Bhola, had been shrunk to half its size over the past 40 years by rising waters, making half a million people homeless.Altogether, 50 million people in Bangladesh live less than five metres above sea level."

"The entire Amazon rainforest could dry out and die. And the world’s climate could flip into a new stable state 6ºC hotter than now, turning a third of the land to desert and confining civilisation to narrow bands around the poles."

"Leaked drafts of the proposed Gleneagles declaration on climate change reveal that it has been watered down by the US to the point where it no longer even accepts that human activities are to blame."

"The pollution that belches from every vehicle, every factory, every farm and every home is rising up into the atmosphere and bouncing the sun’s reflected rays back to Earth, causing the greenhouse effect....

"Polar ice is melting, sea levels are rising, storms are increasing, droughts are becoming more frequent – and more communities around the globe are suffering...

"It has been accepted by every major scientific organisation, every major non-governmental organisation and the vast majority of governments.

"Even the tiny band of sceptics is dwindling, with the veteran TV botanist, David Bellamy, withdrawing from the argument after admitting that he was wrong to say that glaciers were advancing not retreating...

"An analysis of the latest figures shows that pollution from four of the G8 – Canada, US, Japan and Italy – has been increasing when it should have been decreasing.

"The US rise of 13%, between 1990 and 2002, is bigger than the overall reductions that the other seven countries are meant to achieve under Kyoto.

"Even the four countries that are on target for cutting their pollution – France, Germany, UK and Russia – have got there mostly by accident. Dirty old industries in Russia were closed by the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and in Germany, the same happened in the east after reunification.

"Much of the UK’s cuts can be attributed to the shutdown of the coal-mining industry and the Ravenscraig steelworks under the previous Conservative government. Overall, not counting Russia, the G8 countries have increased emissions of carbon dioxide by 7% since 1990, when they should have cut them by about 5%...

"Between 1970 and 1995, the availability of water in Africa decreased 2.8 times... In southern Africa and parts of the Horn, rainfall is projected to decline by about 10% by 2050...

"There are many other things that G8 countries should be doing to curb their own pollution. They need to boost their use of clean energy technologies, tapping wind, wave, tidal, solar and biomass to a much greater extent. They need to develop the technology to capture the carbon produced by burning coal and to store it under the sea or land, so that China has a clean way of utilising its coal.

"G8 leaders ....How can they carry on endorsing the unrelenting increase in air travel and car ownership...

"Along with floods in the Ganges delta and famines in Africa, it is the communities that inhabit low-lying Pacific islands or cling to the ice around the Arctic that are suffering....

Saturday, June 18, 2005

"The despicable US media giants were silent when undisputed proof surfaced that the CIA, NSA, British Intelligence, the US Secret Service and the FBI were all involved in the May 16th 2002 blast in a Philippine hotel room when their agent, Michael Meiring accidently blew his own legs off while constructing a bomb which was intended, if ignited as planned, to be a staged 'Al Queda' terror attack, justifying a tightened US- Philippine military alliance.

"Meiring who operated under the cover of being a treasure hunter was in fact a CIA operative under the direct protection of the White House (As evidenced by his swift NSA/FBI medivac to San Diego after blowing his own legs off). The US spook spent 10 years on assignment associating with Islamic groups, Abu Sayef, MNLF, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and other Philippine based Islamic groups, supplying them with US counterfeit notes (Courtesy of US intelligence) and bomb making materials so that they may create terrorist mayhem within the Philippines, giving the US a pretext to move in and, 'help,' just like in Indonesia - just like nearly everywhere else these Mafia-like thugs can plant their terror and, 'protection' racket."

In ONLINE JOURNAL 24 May 2005 Daniel Estulin wrote about Bilderburg 2005

"INDONESIA-MALAYSIA STANDOFF: A political and military confrontation between these two nations in the petroleum-rich Sulawesi Sea (both claim the oil-rich area of Ambalat as their territorial rights) was the topic of a much-animated discussion...

"An American Bilderberger ... suggested usingthe UN to 'further a peace policy in the region.' Bilderbergers at the lounge table all agreed that such a conflict might well give theman excuse to garrison the disputed area with UN 'Peacekeepers' and thus ensure their ultimate control over the exploitation of this treasure, meaning untapped oil reserves."

According to a news story in the Sydney Morning Herald, November 2, 2002, Indonesian security services may have handled the Bali bomb.

According to the Herald- "Some time around the 30 October 2002, senior officers in the Indonesian military HQ gave a piece of information to a military attache from a Western embassy in Indonesia:- the source of explosive used in the October 12 bombing in Bali was THE HEAD OF THE COUNTER-TERRORISM UNIT WITH THE ARMY'S SPECIAL FORCES."

The father-in-law of the officer concerned is Hendropriyono, Indonesia's spy chief.

On Oct. 16 Indonesian police arrested a former Air Force officer who confessed to building the bomb.

Former Indonesian State Intelligence Coordinating Board (BAKIN) chief A.C. Manulang has said that Kuwaiti citizen Omar Al-Faruq, a terrorist suspect who was arrested in Bogor, West Java, on June 5, 2002 and handed over to the US three days later, is a CIA-recruited agent.

Al Faruq was allegedly assigned to infiltrate Islamic radical groups and recruit local agents within these groups.

"When Al Faruq finished his assignments, the CIA created a scenario that he had been arrested," Manulang told Tempo News Room in Jakarta on Thursday afternoon (19/9/2002). This kind of operation is aimed at starting conflicts in Indonesia and creating the image that Indonesia is a land of terrorists.

"The bombs went off one hour after Tommy Suharto had been interrogated by the police. The bombs were traced back to the army and a former member of Suharto's guard. There were lots of bombs at that time. A woman called Elize Tuwahatu was jailed for ten years after admitting she had placed Tommy's bombs in various places in Jakarta. Now tommy is in jail."

~~

"What about the Moslem fighters in the Moluccas?"

"Groups within the armed forces are behind that... Laskar Jihad, the biggest Moslem militia, has always had links to the army. The army uses them to fight against the independence movement in the Moluccas. And to undermine democracy. And to distract attention away from the corruption of the elite."

~~

Singapore's Straits Times published a document detailing a plan to launch a holy war. Many observers suspect the document is a fake, invented by Indonesian and US intelligence, so that the US can resume military aid to Jakarta.

~~~

"Who bombed Bali?"

"The airline manifest of Garuda airlines shows that at least two military generals from Jakarta happened to visit Bali just three days before the bombings and that they returned to Jakarta just one day before the Sari Club was blown up.

"This was confirmed by armed forces chief General Sutarto, who claimed that General Djaja Suparman was on vacation, while General Ryamizard Riyacudu, chief of staff, was said to have gone to Bali for health reasons.

"General Suparman is one of the generals behind the extremist Jihad groups. He set up militias composed of gangsters and religious fanatics to counter student demonstrations in 1998. One of these militias, Pram Swarkasa, became Laskar Jihad."

~~~

"What about this person called Amrozi, who was arrested?"

"He's probably working for the police. Probably a police informant. Did you see the photos of him getting a friendly handshake from the police chief. They were all smiles."

"On late Thursday night, several members of the police bomb squad visited the city’s main backpacker strip, Jalan Jaksa, but declined to say whether they were acting in response to a threat. Elsewhere in the city, several bars frequented by Westerners have set up nightly road blocks and hired security officials to check all incoming vehicles. Security personnel have also been posted at sidewalk entrances to the shopping complex containing the city’s main McDonald’s restaurant."

If you lived in Malaysia or Singapore you could walk into a hospital in the morning, ask for a hearing test, get the test within minutes, and get a hearing aid the next day.

Recently a British friend waited over a year to have a hearing test at one of Britain's National Health Service hospitals and then waited a further 3 months to get a hearing aid.

When the friend got her appointment she noted that the hospital department had lots and lots of new administrators working at new computers at new desks. But there was a severe shortage ofAudiologists.

The hearing test was carried out in a large untidy room with no soundproofing.

17 Jun 2005 : "Consultant general surgeon Mike Lavelle wrote in a scathing letter how there has been an 'almost unbelievable increase in NHS employees who contribute nothing to the treatment of patients...

"Mr Lavelle, who has worked for the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust for more than two decades, added that the NHS was 'grossly over-managed' with too much cash spent on new managers and not on care...

~~~

Daily Express 17 June 2005:

£16 billion per year is being spent on bureaucrats across the NHS - a quarter of the entire budget.

Since Labour came to power in 1997, the number of penpushers in the NHS has gone up by 60%.

There are now 521,000 NHS bureaucrats - just short of the 550,000 staff trained to help the sick.

Since 1997, the Government has employed managers at three times the rate of clinical staff.

"I have been bollocked big time by a member of New Labour working in my local MPs constituency office. He said that I should not waste my MP's time with my conspiracy theories, and that people visiting their MP should only do so if they have a specific issue for him to deal with. I also got told off at the same time for featuring my MPs photograph and writing about what was said in the surgery. It really does not matter who my MP is - for what I need to do is show people that you can visit your MP and say what needs to be said. So from now on he will be called XXXX..."